Saturday, November 29, 2014

Despite the claims of religions and economists, suffering seldom leads to
enlightenment.

We Shale Overcome:Saudis
in
Vienna for the OPEC meetings are suggesting that they see no need to
cut production and are quite willing to let the market “stabilize
itself”, by which they mean “let low prices kill the shale oil
movement in the US.” If anyone should cut, perhaps it should be
the US, they claim, they are a big producer too. But US
shale is/was at most a threat to their production dominance for
only a few more years. Now the petroleum left in the Bakken and
other US shale plays will be there, a background threat, hovering. Ham
Sandwiches:
In only 11 of the 162,000 federal cases presented to grand juries in
2010 were no indictments returned. That's 0.0007%
of the time.

Selfie:"We
pose no threat to anyone,” says
Vladimir Putin after meeting with his military commanders just back
from eastern
Ukraine and Crimea, “and
do not intend to get involved in any geopolitical games or intrigues,
let alone conflicts, no matter who tries to draw us into them or how
they do so." By-Product:
While digging up mass graves in a search for the 43 missing students,
more
than 20,000 corpses
have
been discovered in Mexico. They
sure pay an awful price for living next door to the world's largest
market for illegal drugs. Assembly
Line:An
Egyptian court has sentenced 78 teenage boys to two to
five years in prison for taking part in demonstrations calling for
the return of Mohamed Morsi, the
duly elected president
deposed by the US backed military dictatorship.

Essay
Prompt:
If economies need to
eliminate the dependence of demand on unsustainable credit, what
policies should governments follow? How much production – at
today's wage levels – can the society support? Who must do without
what? If we save for retirement (10% we're told) and avoid
'unsustainable' levels of credit (which is most credit, but don't
tell anyone), what happens to production? Then what happens to our
income? Ah... I think I see the problem. I also see the vague
outline of the solution, and it's scary.

Mum's
The Word:Turkey,
where
the President has a brand new 3 million square foot, 1,000 plus room
mansion, has banned all
reporting on the
corruption
of ex-ministers. Stuff:
If you wrote a science fiction story about a culture where people
would
line up in the cold and wait for hours to fight each other for
possession of things they do not need and most likely can't afford,
you could title it “Late November, End of the Empire.”

Over-Subscribed:
“If
you added up all of the likely causes [of
the drop in oil prices]
and their likely percentage contribution to the outcome you would get
a number way above 100%.”

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Perfect
Record:Robert
P. McCulloch, has
been theProsecuting
Attorney for St.
Louis
County
since 1991.
During these 20-plus years, not one police officer in the county has
been
prosecuted for killing a suspect. Not one.

Through
A Glass Darkly:
No one actually knows what's going on with oil demand, supply and
price and no one knows where it's going tomorrow. But there are some
things we think we know: If the global economies collapse a bit more
and demand for oil falls another 1 mbd, oil may go to 60 or lower.
If OPEC/Saudi Arabia cuts exports by 1 mbd, and the world's economies
muddle through, prices go back to the $100 range. If the price stays
at or below $80 for long – six months or more, a lot of shale oil
production will
taper off and, after a year or so, a
lot of shale production companies will
default on their loans. And if world prices hover around $80 for
a year or so, a goodly number of oil-based budgets in places like
Venezuela, Russia
and even Saudi Arabia will begin being expressed in economic hardship
and social unrest. Certainly
US retail customers will be glad to take the
money they'll be saving on their gasoline bills and spend it on
other things, like food. But if the low oil prices are due to low
economic demand, these happy days will not last. Most worrisome
would be an expansion of debt in the mistaken belief that Good Times
are back. They
are not.

What
Have You Done For Me Lately?
If
0% growth in
income for
100% of the population would represent a failure
of
our economic system,
what about 0% growth for 90% of the population? Ins
And Outs:
Harry Reid, Temporary Senate Majority Leader, is genuflecting to the
Republicans and letting them make corporate tax breaks permanent.
Obama, under
the strange belief that he's still president, has threatened to
veto the bill because low-income taxpayers do not get a similar
break. Talking
Turkey:
Women are not and cannot ever be equal to men. My name is Recep
Erdoğan,
I'mPresident
of Turkey, and I approved this message. Curiosity:
A Republican passed House bill aimed at hog-tying EPA to keep it
from regulating anything, ever, prohibits scientists on EPA
Scientific Advisory Boards from discussing
their own scientific research. The bill will not pass the Senate, but
it tells us which way the anti-science, anti-regulation stench is
blowing. Endpoint:
There
is no point in debating the facts surrounding the shooting of Michael
Brown by
police officer Darren Wilson. Wilson shot and killed him. Wilson
was a white police officer. Brown is a dead black teenager. End of
story. What did they need a grand jury for? Travel
Planning:
Thinking about going to Detroit? Think again. Even the cops say it
is too dangerous for civilians to enter.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Your
Slip Is Showing:
Private computer security specialists have discovered a “highly
sophisticated piece of spyware” - thought to be a key element in
electronic intelligence-gathering - that was developed
and deployed by NSA and GCHQ over the last decade, targeting
government and industrial computers in Russia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia,
Ireland, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Belgium and the various elements
of the European Union. It has also targeted individuals, small
businesses, telecommunications firms, energy firms, airlines, and
research institutes. This is not malware, it is not there to disrupt
(like Stuxnet
did with Iran's nuclear program), it is there to collect information
and send it home.

Tiddlywinks:
When Texas says it has new history books, it is the history that is
new.

Belief
You Can Change In:
Saintly Pope
Francis has
named a US priest who previously hid reports of sexual abuse by
Chicago area clergy to be the Vatican's prosecutor of sex crimes.
Takes one to know one? Turning the other cheek?

It's
Not Over When It's Over, Part 6:
The House Intelligence Committee Benghazi investigation report
finding the administration did nothing wrong should be the end of the
nonsense from the rabid right. But no. Just like the six previous
government investigations, they came up with the wrong answers.
Don't worry, Trey Gowdy (Rottweiler, SC) - head of John Bohner's
select committee to pick at the Benghazi scab - says the current
report “will aid the select committee's comprehensive investigation
to determine the full facts of what happened in Benghazi.” Unless
– once again – nothing
is found, in which case an eighth investigation will be undertaken.

Laissez-passer:
The Obama administration has released five Guantanamo Bay prisoners
after an administration task force determined that, having been
reduced a drooling, catatonic state by ten years of torture, solitary
confinement and forced feedings, they no longer posed a threat.

Divine
Right of Clings:
Vladimir Putin says he does not want to be President of Russia for
life, only until 2024.
Optimistic fellow.

And
The Winner Is:
Over the past five years, the citizens of Utah were most likely to
be killed by 1) gang bangers, 2) druggies,
3) child abusers, 4) spouses, or 5) police. Well, 'intimate
partners', but just marginally more than the cops. And over the five
years, only one of the police killings resulted in criminal charges –
which were subsequently dismissed.

Lesser
Included Charge:
A Memphis gang leader, indicted by a grand jury for robbing other
drug traffickers, is being charged with “interfering with
interstate commerce.”

On
The Order Of Things:
The visceral, irrational hatred of Barak Obama is not based on
anything he's done but on what he is a symbol of: he is not part of
the acceptable pool of political leaders. It
matters not that he is a mainstream Republican in action, he is not
white, he is not upper class and he is not part of the established
power establishment. He is a threat. He represents the other, them,
those
who
want to take away white privilege.He
does not represent an alternate, liberal political trend – he is
the devil incarnate, come to ruin the land that God gave to rich
white men.

More,
And More:
Britain's Home Secretary, claiming that the nation was under even
more threat from “Islamic radicals”, is threatening to take away
even more privacy from the proletariat in order to protect them. If
only they'd been as concerned
about home-grown pedophiles.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Separated
at Birth:
While the AP headlined
“House
intel panel debunks Benghazi
theories"
and
noted that no administration wrongdoing or lying or coverup were
found. Fox headlined “
"CIA
gathered intelligence on weapons to Syria: Benghazi report."
and
stressed that Republicans want to
expand
the witch hunt to a (Republican-led) Senate
investigation under Lindsey
Graham (Rabid-SC),
who claimed “the
report is full of crap." Vacancy:
First they set fire to Palestinian homes, then the government
calls them abandoned and bulldozes them, then Israeli settlers move in. Any
questions?

Morpheus:
It's not exactly censorship, but the NY Times is certainly
accommodating of the administration's
sensitivities. The story about the resumption of combat operations
in Afghanistan was originally
headlined; “In
secret, Obama extends US role in Afghan Combat.”
That quickly became “Obama
decided to authorize...”
And you're back on the Christmas card list.

Takes
One To Know One:
The former leader of a rabid Christian group that claimed that
prayer could “cure” homosexuality has abandoned his wive and
married his male lover. We wish them every happiness.

Old
Boy Network:
Since at least the early 1980s, successive British governments have
issued 'D-notices' prohibiting the publication of stories concerning
an ongoing pedophile ring based in Parliament which included
murdering
young boys in order to scare others into submission and even
occasionally
killing their victims just because they could. And they could,
knowing that all trace of the police records could and would be
erased. Current attempts to trace these allegations in the official
records have been frustrated because the pertinent Home
Office fileshave
gone
missing.

Water
To Burn:
The American Petroleum
Institute claims that the 'typical' fracked well uses 2 to 4 million
gallons of water. What they don't note is that over 250 fracked
wells have used upwards of 25 million gallons of water. Each. In
Texas, which is not exactly over-flowing with potable water,
more than 21 billion gallons of fresh water were used for fracking
during
2011.

Analysis:
How many false assumptions are contained in the Fox claim that “Your
kids are getting shafted” because immigrants get school lunches.

Nail/Horse/Battle:
The reason you in the US do not hear more about the
collapse of society in
Mexico is that it is our fault and we do not want to face up to
what we have done. Our
demand for
drugs
has
brought unimaginable corruption and violence
to Mexico, Shame
on us. Note that most of the drug trade depends on major US banks to
launder their profits.

Count
To Ten and Calm Down:
A
12-year-old Cleavland,
Ohio boy
playingata
public
playground was shot
and killed
police. He
was
playing with a toy gun. He
did not make any threats. He
did not
point the gun at the officers. He
was black.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Plan
B:
Obama, exercising his legitimate authority under the Constitution,
has decided that the parents of US citizens (ie, children born in the
US) may remain in the US temporarily without fear of arrest and
deportation until such time as the Congress resolves their status.
They may legally apply for work and pay taxes, but may not get health
care under ACA nor vote. John Boehner is aghast and wants to hold
hearings on the Republican plan to deport all 11 million of the
illegal aliens using trains of 100 freight cars, each holding 80
undocumented workers, to ship them to somewhere, every day, five days
a week, every week for five years. He says they'll also hire enough
thugs with guns to prevent any more illegals from arriving during
those five years. No, no. I know, the Republicans don't actually
have a plan. But FOX does, which is much the same thing.

Armageddon:
Pope Francis says greed will 'destroy the world'. What happened to
“the fire next time”?

Getting
What You Didn't Ask For:
The Republicans, by obstructing every administration effort and
refusing to compromise at any point on anything have made it
inevitable that Obama's approach to health care, climate change and
immigration, will carry the day. Their
intransigence has guaranteed that the policies implemented are far
more liberal than they would have been had the GOP been interested in
actually governing.

Faint
Praise:
Responding to the military
dictatorship
more-or-less elected government's decree, Egyptian editors have
promised not to criticize any institution in the country. They
didn't say anything about the occasional sly bit of satire.

TKO:After
two years of baseless accusations, prurientinnuendo,
non-stop harassment of State, Defense and Intelligence personnel, and
slander of the administration in interviews and fake news releases,
the Republicans have concluded that
there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue
team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, no evidence the
CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria, and
no cover-up because there never had been anything to cover up.Equal
time? Hey, this is FOX we're talking about.

Greener
Grass:
Fab, Inc., which was valued at just over a billion dollars a year
ago, is in talks to sell itself to PCH Intentional for $15 million.
Only half in cash, darling.

Reading
Righting & Ticked:
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that the state has no
obligation to provide quality public education, it just has to build
and staff the schools. The kids have to go to school, but the
schools don't gotta teach them no nothing. That “ no fewer than
78.9 percent of current fourth graders and 73 percent of current
seventh graders will require” special ed to reach mandated levels. Wet
Dream:
Some in Utah want to cut off all water to the giant NSA facility
there as a means of protesting the Agency's massive illegal
surveillance programs.

Friday, November 21, 2014

@Cyberwar!
The Pentagon, fearing that Americans were not fearful enough, have
sent forth Mike Rogers - director of NSA, head of the US Cyber
Command and
an Admiral with a very pretty uniform -
to shake his finger at us and warn us that China “...and two or
three others...” can shut down most of the important infrastructure
systems in the country – power grids, water supplies, nuclear power
plants, McDonald's and the NFL. And they've been able to do this for
some years now, but War, Inc. thought we needed the reminder.

Turkeys:
Walmart is organizing food drives among its employees to feed its
employees who don't make enough working at Walmart – to the point
that Walmart employees get $6.2 billion a year from the taxpayers to
help them survive Walmart's starvation wages. The company says that
the food drive is proof that its employees care far more about their
fellow employees than the company does.

Breadcrumbs:
An investigation by the US Senate has concluded that when banks get
involved with commodity markets, they rig them. Same holds for the
Senate.

Budget
Message:Secretary
of Defense Chuck Hagel says
the US must increase its military spending, maintain waste and
profiteering at current levels, and start several small wars, or
risk being overrun by Sri Lanka.

Crapafornia:The
California University System plans to increase tuition by 25% over
the next five years. Do
not expect
a corresponding increase in knowledge or
the
starting salaries of graduates.New
& Improved:
Joint Chiefs Chairman General
Martin Dempsey says that the new war in Iraq is “different.”
Last time we killed them because Saddam tried to do something unkind
to Georgie's dad and besides they had a lot of oil. This time it's
because they don't like us for what we did last time.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Bottom
Line:
The pussy-footing climate scientists who have tiptoed around making
over-abundantly sure of every little bit of evidence of global
warming now insist that carbon emissions “must be abolished” by
2070. Completely. Or else. Go read the 'or else' part, because
we've yet to show the slightest inclination to listen to these
experts.

#Occupy:
The Tanzanian government is evicting 40,000 Masai from their
ancestral lands so it can be turned into a playground where
the Dubai royal family can hunt big game until
its all gone.
The government is promising to spend $575,000 on “socio-economic
development projects” in compensation. A bit more than ten bucks a
head, which is more than we paid the Indians.

Quoted:There
seem to be two types of German
economists; those that have not read Keynes, and those that have not
understood what
they read.

The
Ioannidis Critique:Those
financial strategies that claim
to beat the market don’t, and
financial
research papers that claim to have found patterns in financial
markets haven’t. If
someone has found the green jellybeans (read the article) of
richness, (a) why
would
they tell anyone and (b) why
aren't
they so rich they don't have to sell the secret to you? Incentives:
D'ya think that the secret files the NSA holds over our politicians
had any influence on the defeat of legislation that would have
diminished the NSA's ability to compile secret files on everyone?

Teaching
Point:
Private
voucher and charter schools have shown no ability to improve student
achievement. They
do, however, excel
at taking
money away from public schools.

Mission
Accomplished:After
13 years, 2 official
wars,
any
number of remote-controlled secondary wars and
trillions in military spending,terrorist
attacks are rising sharply. Took
long enough. If
Only:Iceland
has
jailed
the former CEO of
Landsbanki, one of the three large banks that crashed the Icelandic
economy through greed and stupidity. The floor is now open for
nominations.

Infrastructure:
Instead of struggling to keep the corporations from holding the
internet hostage and stealing all they can from the citizenry,
perhaps the citizens' representatives could take back what the
government invented and create a nation-wide high-speed completely
free internet. Like the interstate system.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Growing
up involves becoming less and less curious about the world around us.

Prior
Restraint:
Shell's attempt to get the courts to prevent anyone from suing it
at some time in the future for things it
may do in the future was tossed out by the 9thCircuit Court, which called the effort “novel” and
“unconstitutional.”

Cream/Crop:
The CEOs of at least 7 of the nation's 30 largest companies made
more last year (at an average of $17.3 million) than their companies
paid in taxes – on a combined $75 billion in profits. In fact, as
a group they paid no taxes and got back $1.9 billion in refunds.
Ain't this a great country, or what?

God
Bless The USA:
About 1 out of every 30 children in the US (about
2.5 million) was
homeless at some point during the last year. A new record. Makes me
proud to cut welfare, food stamps, homeless shelters and the rest of
those bleeding heart liberal social experiments. If,
But, Then:
Americans believe
CEO's should make about 10 times what
the
average worker does
and
think they make 40 times the average, but in reality (assuming this
is reality...) CEO's
take home 350 times what you do. Big
Wheel Keeps On Turning:
Over the centuries, the gap between the rich and the poor has always
grown and grown and groan and eventually resulted in revolution.
Today a majority
of Americans make
less than $20 per hourwhile
a handful of creeps make hundreds of millions a year.
But
inequality tends to be cyclical and cynical and I say off with their
heads!

Encouragement:
Governor Mike Pence is “ennobling” Indiana's poor people by
kicking them off food stamps. They'd
rather be enfooded. Just
Do It:
Worldwide there are at least 36 million people who live and work as
slaves. Not all of them build skyscrapers in Dubai, clean houses in
Riyadh or make stuff for Nike and Apple. Education,
Public:
After black students at Booker T. Washington high school in Norfolk,
VA walked out of school when they discovered that a school official
had publicly called young black men “Every
white girl’s father’s worse nightmare”, which was any thinking person's nightmare.Recalculating:
In Georgia, you can kill someone who pulls into your driveway to
turn around. Just claim you were afraid for your life, even if the
car is backing away from you. You can stand your ground even if you
have to grab your gun
and
run out of the house to do so.

Leveling:
In his on-going attempt to level the playing field, John 'I'm the
Speaker' Boehner is pushing a bill that would exempt internet
companies peddling goods in your state from paying the same taxes the
companies and stores in your state have to pay. Some businesses are
more equal than others, y'see. Just another way to cut taxes and
starve state budgets.

These
Are The Good Old Days:
How much of the 'preparedness'
going on in Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and the nation is
anticipation
and how much of it is guilt? Faint
Praise: People
who have health insurance under the ACA like it about as well as
people who have any other form of health insurance. It's too
expensive, they say,
doesn't cover
everything and the
co-pays are too high.
So we've achieved health
insurance equality. Now if we could develop
good single
payer national health
insurance program that
isn't too expensive, covered
damned near everything
and had
low or no copays... And
was the only game in town so all doctors and hospitals had to accept
it, then we'd be getting somewhere.

Golly
Gee: Research
shows that the difference between poor blacks and poor whites is not
nearly as dramatic as the gulf between the poor and the rest. The
color gulf exists for the convenience of the rich.

Say
/ Do: As Putin
fled the pressure from the leaders at the G-20 summit, he made it
clear that he wasn't fleeing the pressure from the summit leaders
about Ukraine.

'Twas
Ever So:
Research based on criminal records concludes that right-to-carry and
concealed-carry laws increase the number of violent crimes in a
state. The NRA disagrees and insists that Stanford asked the wrong
people, should have
asked
their members rather than going by actual data.

Slip
Sliding Our Way:John Thune
(Reconsidering-SD),
the third most powerful
Republican in the Senate, acknowledges that “human activity”
contributes to “climate change” and “The
question is, what are we going to do about it and at what cost?”

The
Key: The CEO
of the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline has corrected Mitch
McConnell
on the mater of job creation: The pipeline will provide 50 permanent
jobs, which is well worth another degree or two of global warming. Plowshares:
Military fraud
in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated to have cost the US taxpayer at
least $30 billion and possibly $60 billion. And that's before you
count the Blackwater
and Halliburton
contracts. Peace may be the military's mission, but profits are its
product. Bringing
In The Sheaves:Governments and
businesses around the world are 'harvesting' and digitally storing
voiceprints – yours, mine, whomever – against the day they might
be useful. Over 65 million of them, so far. They'll be handy for
identifications, later on, if they decide to hold trials. Off-Broadway:Canada has
new legislation that immunizes their telecommunications providers
against those nasty lawsuits from customers when they discover their
provider has been delivering all their personal information to the
government without warrant or judicial oversight. Martin Short may
have been the last decent Canadian export. Porn
O'Graphs:
Boiling away.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Mujahedin
2.0:
The US is going to train 2,000
Syrian rebel fighters
in Turkey before letting them loose. Not any rebels, of course, only
the moderate ones. What could go wrong? Okay, but besides turning
on us?

Keys
To The Kingdom:
With or without a Presidential veto, the Keystone pipeline extension
will be approved and make little difference to eventual global
warming. The pipeline would cut
the transportation costs
of Alberta's heavy, tar-like oil a
bit, but it will not accelerate the rate nor extent of the
eventual mining of the tar sands, the spewing of its CO2, the
despoliation of the environment or its contribution to our eventual
7 degrees of self-immolation. That's all
priced in. Sadly:
Surveys show that Americans
are
less violent than ever, except for the cops.

Love
'em & Leave 'em:After
years of neglect, the
Pentagon's nuclear
arsenal needs billions of
dollars to
get them ready so we won't have to use them. Thought we weren't
gonna study nuclear war no more.

After
Action Report:
An internal IMF review has concluded that almost everything the IMF
suggested or insisted on following the financial collapse was wrong
to the point of making things worse. It says this circuitously in
rather big words, but that's the conclusion.
The IMF now
pretends that it always was in favor of infrastructure investment as
an appropriate stimulus and doesn't know where this terrible idea of
government austerity came from, but they lie. In their heart of
hearts, as IMF Director Lagarde insists, the “move toward measured
consolidation was the right call to make.” A simple “I'm sorry.”
would have been nice.

Dodge
Ball:
Bristol-Myers
Squibb's
subsidiary in Luxembourg has
one employee, a part-timer who earned €3,700 in 1012 while racking
up €7.6 billion in profits – after paying €82,000 in taxes.
How are things in
your part of the world?

Per
Capital:
Federal judges have ordered California to begin releasing
non-violent offenders by January in order to reduce prison
overcrowding. California argues that the sate cannot afford to lose
the cheap prison labor, and fears that the current drive to privatize
California prisons will not bring in as much money if the head count
goes down. No
more Mr. Nice Guy:Just
when you thought he'd caught on to the general idea, Pope
Francis
reverts
to the old 'we know what's best for everyone' style of religious
demagoguery and calls euthanasia and abortion “sins against god”.
Which god, he didn't mention, but it's a good bet it's not the Jesus
fellow.

Return
Engagement:
Congressional Republicans are rattling the 'shut down the
government' saber again. Already. To teach the President that he
can't use the powers of the presidency just because he's the
President. The biggest problem with democracy is the people the
people elect.

Fly
By:
US federal
marshals are putting devices on small planes that mimic cell phone
towers, enabling them to collect data on tens of thousands of
people's cell phone calls with a single flight. And without a single
warrant. But you're not doing anything that's currently illegal, are
you?

No
Comment:
Economists claim that Greece’s
recession is over even
though
unemployment is still at
25.9%.
There's
a lot of that going around.

Be
Afraid:
Kurdish leaders are claiming that ISIS does not have 20,000
fighters, as the US claims, but an army of 200,000. That's why the
US must give them more money and more arms
and, especially, more money.

Sharing
The Blame:ISISAyatollah
KhomeiniTurkish
PM Erdoğan says America was discovered by Muslims, not Columbus. On
camelback.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.